World Press Photo Awards Announced

Winners of the 56th annual World Press Photo contest were announced today in Amsterdam. The jury, chaired by Santiago Lyon, Vice President and Director of Photography at the Associated Press, selected a photo by Paul Hansen of Dagens Nyheter as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012 (the photo, which contains graphic content, appears at the bottom of this post). To see the full set of winning photos, visit the World Press site. Below are a few winning entries.

Description: A jockey, his feet stepped into a harness strapped to the bulls and clutching their tails, shows relief and joy at the end of a dangerous run across rice fields during the Pacu Jawi Bull Race in Batu Sangkar, West Sumatra, Indonesia, Feb. 12, 2012. The Pacu Jawi (bull race) is a popular competition at the end of harvest season keenly contested between villages.

Description: Pausing in the rain, a woman who works as a trash picker at the 30-acre dump, which spills into the households of one million people living in nearby slums, reads a book she came across April 3, 2012, in Nairobi. She even likes the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day besides picking [trash],” she said.

Photo by Rodrigo Abd, Argentina, The Associated Press, winner of 1st prize for General News Single.

Description: Aida cries while recovering from severe injuries she received when her house was shelled by the Syrian Army, in Idib, Syria, on March 10, 2012. Her husband and two children were fatally wounded during the shelling.

Description: The endangered Southern Cassowary feeds on the fruit of the Blue Quandang tree near Black Mountain Road, Australia, on Nov. 16, 2012. Cassowaries are a keystone species in northern Australian rainforests because of their ability to carry so many big seeds such long distances.

Description: Pine trees, uprooted during last year’s tsunami, lay strewn over the beach. As the one year anniversary approached, the areas most affected by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which left 15,848 dead and 3,305 missing, according to Japan’s National Police Agency, continued to struggle.

Description: After living with his father for 10 years and staying in a youth shelter, Martin, 18 years old, returned home two years ago to live with his mother. He arrived with some clothes in a bag, no employment and no degree. Photo taken on Feb. 15, 2011, in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

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Photo by Paul Hansen, Sweden, Dagens Nyheter, winner of World Press Photo of the Year 2012.

Descripton: Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her three-year-old brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father, Fouad, was killed and their mother was put in intensive care. Fouad’s brothers carried the children to the mosque for the burial ceremony, while the father’s body was carried behind on a stretcher in Gaza City on Nov. 20, 2012.

Comments (5 of 12)

Paul Hansen is so strong, who can resist the beauty and sadness of this shot immortalizing the ugliest face of our civilisation

1:51 pm February 16, 2013

Bo wrote:

I don't really care whether there is a political statement in the last photo. Whenever people die, especially children, it makes me terribly sad.

8:03 pm February 15, 2013

Steve wrote:

Israel is a racist, apartheid occupying power built on land stolen at the point of a sword from people who still want to return to their homes with dignity and human rights. I’m from the US with ancestry in Northern Europe. But, facts are facts, regardless of what Jews and Fundament Christians want to be true.

6:38 pm February 15, 2013

WPG wrote:

I have a real problem giving an audience to what is going on in the last photo. It tells half the story. Yellow photojournalism at its worst.